TI go on regularly The Annunciata by Antonello da Messinapreserved at Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, which I also had the courage to exhibit at the Diocesan Museum – when I was Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Milan, in 2007 – sparking controversy in Sicily for the alleged “expropriation” of the masterpiece from Palazzo Abatellis which, moreover, was closed at that time. As if Antonello wasn’t the father of a national language in painting, if his teaching hadn’t generated a new and anomalous wave in Northern Italy, and as if Milan wasn’t Italy.
But why go back now? Why 550 years have passed since its creation. And for a short circuit: for the special issue of I Woman last November 8th I was asked to reflect on a work of art that showed a single, or solitary, person – in reality the term used was “single”.
For that number, I didn’t think of a simple unity, but of a “two that becomes one”, as it is in the miracle of love, and my attention fell on Paolo and Francesca, protagonists of the V Canto ofHelland on the representation made by the Ferrarese painter Gaetano Previati.
But as soon as I sent the text, it appeared to me The Annunciata of Antonello, and then again Lady with an Ermine by Leonardoexemplary figures of being alone. Sun in the sense of solitary, but also in the sense of the ability to radiate light, to move the world around them, even to attract God to themselves. Sun because the whole world is inside them, and almost evoked by them. So this text, ideally, repairs my forgetfulness.
“Annunciata” by Antonello da Messina, 1475. Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo (photo Molteni &Motta / Universal Images Group via Getty Images).
As the subject ofAnnounced indicates – and as Antonello himself had operated on similar subjects – the table would suggest a compartment next to which there should be a similar one: that is, the Annunciation and, next to it, the announcing angel, composing the diptych of a single scene: the Annunciation. But Antonello’s painting is an Annunciation, and it is alone, that is, absolute – sharing, as I believe, the same fate as Lady with an Ermine.
If the Mona Lisa of the Louvre looks at everyone, she winks with her magnetic, eternal feminine gaze that draws us all, the Lady with the Ermine doesn’t look at us. For her we don’t exist, and if we exist, we don’t count: she – Cecilia Gallerani – looks in one direction only, to her left, and looks at only one, who is the man she loves, that is, Ludovico il Moro, destined for her in marriage. But he is not there, he is not foreseen by Leonardo, because he is inside her. In looking at her, we also feel the other. It is the highest sign of an indication of totality, of faithfulness for a man which is seen in this work precisely because we are excluded from the work: we see her in profile, but she seems to be talking to someone else.
The gaze of Antonello’s Annunciata, however, turns boldly towards us. The hand reaches out in a similar way into space, conquers it, and seems to exclude the possibility of an announcing angel: this should appear at her side, because generally, in the classic iconography of the Annunciation, the Madonna is in profile. But here Mary is almost frontal and therefore the angel could not appear in a lateral compartment, because, if so, she would not see him.
The angel, although not painted, “must” be there, because the hands – one stretched forward almost to defend herself, the other intent on keeping the veil closed out of modesty – indicate a presence in front of her. Therefore the Annunciata does not look at us, but at the angel who is where we are who look at her. We are the announcing angel, while we are denied in our role as spectators. Mary ennobles us to this point.
It is a model that Velázquez will repeat with Las Meninas: the real things, reflected in the mirror, that the painter paints, are where the spectator who looks is, who is therefore no longer (only) a spectator. In Antonello’s Annunciata the angel is not painted, but he is there. It’s inside her. But above all it is in front of her, invisible but real. And it is so real that Mary is afraid of it, she protects herself with the veil that covers her belly already waiting for the son who is announced here and now, while the other hand – with that formidable gesture – asks the angel to wait.
And if we still had doubts about the reality of the angel’s presence, the Gothic lectern, placed in a three-quarter angle – with the edge that follows the trajectory of the right hand – helps to thicken it the pages of the book suspended in mid-air, stopped in the fateful moment in which the angel bursts in. In her sacred solitude, therefore, Mary has the whole world inside and before her.
All articles by Vittorio Sgarbi